NTES - TX2 status part 2 – Official Closed Beta on 9/24/2008

Part 1 of this article can be found here:
http://chinese-net-gaming-stock.blogspot.com/2008/09/ntes-tx2-status-part-1-1st-expansion.html

I had been quite critical of NTES’s management in their lack of marketing for TX2. From the way the game is played and the way it is received by the players, it is obvious that NTES has a potential mega-hit in TX2. But I thought with the lack of marketing for TX2, NTES could ruin a great game.

Well, I might be way too harsh on NTES. It is probably not a good idea to go against NTES on how a game is developed and is ran.

From the following article:
http://tx2.163.com/news/2008/9/5/4006_192234.html
and from the official web site of TX2:
http://tx2.163.com/

NTES is going to set 9/24/2008 as the date for the “Official Closed Beta” for TX2. They are going to opens up multiple game servers for the Official Closed Beta.

TX2 had been in commercial operation since 6/6/2008. But they never had a formal major marketing campaign to announce their “grand opening”. TX2 was supposed to be the next major project for NTES and I thought it is crazy for NTES to start commercial operation of TX2 without any major marketing campaign.

Well, it turns out there might be good rationale behind it.

Even though there were no mass of players playing TX2 on 6/6/2008. Unlike other games with massive marketing campaign and has a couple of hundreds of thousands of players within the first 2 weeks, TX2 never have that.

But it is building momentum continuously. It had slowly building so that it has 25 servers now. That would probably translate to a PCU of about 80k to 90k players. Unlike most other games that fade quickly after a few months, TX2 is actually getting stronger and stronger.

In addition, because it is only closed beta, there are still opportunities for NTES to do marketing if it is needed.

The jury is still out. But TX2 is starting to act more like a major hit that has long legs.